The National Air Company of Uzbekistan flies to more than 40 countries

Botschaft Usbekistan, August 27, 2015

Flying in the plane for a passenger is always a beautiful picture, new emotions and feelings, creating an aperitif to the main course – traveling, conducting business negotiations and meetings with near and dear ones. Few can even imagine that huge work of dozens of thousands of people, the most complicated mechanism, each chain of which should operate with a clockwise precision is hidden behind this ‘gloss’. The skies never forgive mistakes and negligence. Hence, there is no objective more important for the National Air Company of Uzbekistan for the duration of 23 years than maximum safety and comfort for passengers.

Many new states had emerged on the political map of the world in the early 90s of the last century and every one of them deemed it its duty to proclaim itself through setting up its own civil aviation depot. About 300 different air companies had emerged on the basis of the former monopoly “Aeroflot”, which proudly stated about their future leadership among the CIS countries. Time however has put everything in its own place. Uzbekistan never chased momentary passenger or cargo transportation growth indicators and never tried to cover the whole world. A clearly formulated and well-thought over strategy for the stage-by-stage development of civil aviation was adopted at the dawn of independence and its foundations were made up of these invariable principles – maximum safety, economic efficiency and ecology-friendliness.

There is no need to hide that the National Air company of Uzbekistan had inherited a difficult heritage – depot of planes consisted of the old soviet machinery. The airports’ infrastructure also required immediate modernization and its services needed to be fitted out with new equipment. But the heart of any air company is its personnel, since machinery and tools without a human is a heap of useless metal, but it is namely personnel who decide everything under present-day conditions. Hence rejection of the old air machinery and procurement of the latest planes, radical change in the system of training personnel with the introduction of international standards at all levels – starting with pilots, stewards and technicians up to catering cooks and airport staff, as well as a large-scale modernization of ground infrastructure became key elements of development tendencies.

Having set up an ambitious objective – join the leaders of not only regional, but the global market of air transportation, having carried out a large-scale modernization of the depot and the ground infrastructure, and having consolidated the personnel potential the “Uzbekiston Havo Yollari” National Air Company today has turned into the most important element of the national economy and a symbol of Uzbekistan’s independence.

But it is the Company’s plans for the feasible future that manifest best and most accurately its dynamic aspiration for progress. And the plans are great indeed according to CIS countries’ scales. Thus, for example, in 2016 the Company expects the arrival of two planes of the future – Boeing-787-8 Dreamliner. Moreover, the Company has already welcomes one ‘newcomer’ this year – multi-purpose Mi-8MTB-1 helicopter.

A CAE manufactured Canadian A320 Full-flight simulator will be installed at the NAC Training center by the end of this year, which will help the air crews to develop their piloting skills in real time conditions. The “Tashkent” airport will be subject to a large-scale modernization. The South Korean partners will render assistance in the construction of a new passenger terminal “Tahkent-4”, which will become the most advanced one in Central Asia. It is planned to commission it for operation by the end of 2019.

Besides, a center for the repair of major elements of plane structures made up of composite materials is to be set up jointly with the Boeing Company on the basis of the Uzbekistan Airways Technics, which is expected to be turned over for exploitation already next year. And these are only a few projects which within the feasible future will be able to bring the national civil aviation into a qualitatively new level.
(Source: «Uzbekistan Today» newspaper)